A Gun Can't Operate on its Own

Preferential Treatment

Our Government No Longer Provides Any Foundation of Justice or Morality

It happened so subtly that few people noticed at first.  Little by little, morality and freedom started to crumble.  It came first in government, in education, in the media—and finally it began to shake our families and our own lives.

Something fundamental has changed.  Law and government no longer provide a foundation of justice and morality but have become the means of licensing moral perversions of all kinds.  Education has become the enemy of religious truth and values.  And the media have provided the means for propagating the change.

…we have failed to understand the problem—to see that the whole foundation for society has shifted radically from its Judeo-Christian basis to a humanistic basis.  As the humanistic view takes over, it necessarily destroys the whole way of life built upon the Judeo-Christian heritage.

Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, from cover flap. Cited by Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.215

Sex-Morality Teaching and Public School

I never believe in giving sex-morality teaching to children in schools.  You are introducing them to sin.  You are telling them about things they never knew before, and they are not “pure.”  Therefore you cannot act on the assumption that such teaching will lead to good.  That is the whole tragedy of modern education; it is based entirely on a psychological theory that does not recognize sin, instead of on New Testament teaching.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount,” volume 1, p.240

“Solutions” Which Cause More Problems

Increasingly we view sexuality with the impoverished imagination of the technician scouting out solutions to problems. Disease? Use a condom. Unwanted pregnancies? Here’s the Pill. Heartbroken youth? Give them sex-ed. Resulting despair and purposelessness? More condoms, more pills, and more sex-ed. The feedback loop is by now fairly obvious, with “solutions” causing as many problems as they “solve.” Yet we cannot imagine anything other than to double-down on the solutions. So we try the same things again and again in the naïve faith that these mysteries are really just problems.

R.J. Snell, “Ancient Wisdom in Barren Times”

Inheritance Tax is Resentment Tax

It is no surprise that one theory that fills the secularist with glee is the inheritance tax.   He believes that marrying and raising children is just one among many alternative forms of human living arrangements.  Philosophically speaking, everyone agrees that when a man dies, he no longer legally owns his possessions.  Those whose world view is informed by taking Judaism or Christianity seriously, feel that the dead parents’ children have a priority claim on the estate.  The others argue that this is unfair to everyone else.

Inheritance taxes express an attitude of resentment for every penny a child receives from his parents’ estate.  Why should only a few prosper by some money suddenly becoming ownerless?  It should belong to everybody, because (and here is the crux) there is no significance, other than the merely biological, to the parent-child relationship.  Like animals in a zoo, when one animal’s food dish is abandoned the others converge to feed themselves.

Invariably, politicians with an anti-God view will happily introduce, and then raise, the inheritance tax.  No matter how well intentioned . . . they are deeply offended that some people should acquire more of a departed citizen’s wealth than others merely because an accident of birth made them his children.  They feel that when a human dies, his property should belong to all citizens equally.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.237

Today’s Times Again Try Men’s Souls

These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us that, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

Thomas Paine, 1776

The Law Is a Teacher

By providing easy exits from marriage and its responsibilities, no-fault divorce helped to change the perception of marriage from a permanent institution designed for the needs of children to a temporary one designed for the desires of adults.  As it became not only legally much easier to leave one’s spouse but also psychologically and socially easier, the percentage of children growing up with just one parent skyrocketed.  The law shapes our culture, which shapes our beliefs, which shape our actions.  The law is a teacher.

Ryan T. Anderson, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” pg.40

Schoolbooks Are Crowd-Control

Schoolbooks are a crowd-control device.  Only the very innocent and well-schooled see any difference between good ones and bad ones; both kinds do the same work.

John Taylor Gatto, “What’s Really Wrong With Our Schools?” pg.24

When America Saved Europe From Islam

Thomas Jefferson fought back, and ended Moslem piracy in Europe.  It was the first time America saved Europe militarily, and no one seems to remember, least of all the Europeans.  Although our people don’t remember, they do speak about it whenever they sing or hear the first words of the Marine Corps Anthem:  “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country’s battles on the land and on the sea….”  Why don’t we teach our children about the wars these words refer to?

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.203

It is the Parents’ Duty to Raise the Child

First and foremost, the bringing up of children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” is something which is to be done in the home and by the parents.  This is the emphasis throughout the Bible.  It is not something that is to be handed over to the school, however good the school may be.  It is the duty of parents, their primary and most essential duty.  It is their responsibility, and they are not to hand over this responsibility to another.  I emphasize this because we are all well aware of what has been happening increasingly during this present century.  More and more, parents have been transferring their responsibilities and their duties to the schools.  I regard this as a most serious matter.  There is no more important influence in the life of a child than the influence of the home.  The home is the fundamental unit of society, and children are born into a home, into a family.  There you have the circle that is to be the chief influence in their lives.  There is no question about that.  . . .

The teaching of the Scripture is that the child’s welfare, the child’s soul, should always be the primary consideration; and all matters of prestige — not to use any other term — and all matters of ambition should be put severely aside.  Anything that militates against the child’s soul, and its knowledge of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, should be rejected.  The first consideration invariably should be the soul and its relationship to God.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home & Work: An Exposition of Ephesians 5:18-6:9, pg. 293-294

Inheritance Tax Reduces Productivity

Allowing the government to take everything people have worked for after their death will ensure that people will naturally produce less.  Why should they risk working hard for others not of their blood?  Thus, not only is the inheritance tax immoral, it also discourages individual enterprise and thrift which, in turn, damages our economic productivity.  . . .

I can be persuaded to become far more productive than my own immediate needs would demand, but only by the urge to provide for my children.  If our government’s inheritance tax makes it difficult for my additional work to benefit my children, then I shall stop being a producer and become a consumer.  All of society will eventually suffer from this squandering of human capital.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," p.236

Pursuit of Happiness

The right to the “pursuit of happiness” … tends to fuse liberty and property.  It means something like this:  the right to use one’s own faculties for one’s own ends or purposes.  Happiness, it should be noted, did not then refer to some sort of subjective state of bliss, as we might nowadays suppose.  It meant rather that satisfaction that arises from developing one’s abilities and receiving the rewards from doing so.

Clarence B. Carson, in reference to the Declaration of Independence, in A Basic History of the United States, Vol. 2: The Beginning of the Republic 1775-1825, pg.25

How to Destroy America From Within

If you want to change a people for the worse, you have to start by undermining their values. This happens by slowly, yet surely taking over their institutions. Control Hollywood and the music industry and you can portray duty, honor and character as old timey concepts that no longer matter. You can also paint the most successful Americans as bad guys, the military as mind-numbed robots and decent Christians as hypocrites who want to ruin everyone’s good time.

More importantly, once you have actors and musicians on your side, there is practically no limit to the number of ways you can shape the culture for the worse. You can promote drug use and promiscuous sex. You can encourage men to feminize and women to be more masculine. Most importantly, you can portray your opponents who want to save what’s great about America as desperately unhip.

This reinforces the messages young Americans, who care desperately about being popular, are getting from their schools. Once you control Hollywood, music and the schools, you have a direct pipeline to the brains of the young Americans who will one day run the country.

John Hawkins, How To Destroy America From Within.  Read the whole article!

Love vs Lust

From Tim Challies' blog

Societal Dangers of Same-Sex “Marriage”

A radical change in the law of marriage will have at least four harmful consequences that we can foresee.  The needs and rights of children will be subordinated to the desires of adults.  The marital norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence will be weakened.  Unborn children will be put at even more risk than they already are.  And religious liberty — Americans’ “first freedom” — will be threatened.

Ryan T. Anderson, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” pg.39

Television in the Classroom

Television has entered the classroom because it is a collective mechanism and, as such, is much superior to textbooks; similarly, slides, audio tapes, group games, and so on meet the need to collectivize, which is a central purpose of mass schooling.  This is the famous “socialization” that schools do so well.

John Taylor Gatto, “What’s Really Wrong With Our Schools?” pg.24

Born That Way? So What!

The biological argument [that a person was “born that way” as a “homosexual’] could be used by mass-murderers, pedophiliacs, chronic liars, and virtually everyone to justify their sins.  We are all born with a corrupt nature which desires to fulfill sinful passions.  Homosexuality is merely one of those for some people, whatever the root cause.  As with other sinful behavior, one must repent and deal with it through the power of the Holy Spirit and according to biblical principles.

Gary E. Gilley, “Homosexuality: The Pressing Issue Facing the Church.” Personal Freedom Outreach’s, “The Quarterly Journal,” p.18

The Problem With a Morally Unhealthy USA

A United States that is not healthy in its own fiber, that is unable to live up to its moral commitments at home and abroad, leaves an orphaned world unprotected and exposed to camps and to gulags.

Samuel Pisar, Of Blood and Hope, pg.307

Corporations and State Control

The young people who criticize corporations so vehemently, often with good reason, and who wish to subject them to massive, even complete, state control, have no idea of the dangers that lurk in the incest of government and business.

Consortiums between those holding economic power and those holding political power can lead, and have led, to unholy alliances in which all ethical considerations vanish.

Samuel Pisar, Of Blood and Hope, pg.242

The Pill and Sexual Anarchy

It is now hard to remember the huge controversy that surrounded the invention and introduction of the birth control pill.  Never before had it been possible for young women to become sexually promiscuous without fear of pregnancy.  This was the early 1960s, and the co-called “baby boom” generation (children of the W.W.II generation, born in the 1940s) was just reaching sexual maturity.  The mentors of that pivotal generation, the so-called “beatniks,” were young adults in the 1950s who had turned their backs on the social norms that had always prevailed before them.  Part of it had to do with the newly ubiquitous automobile, which gave young people unprecedented freedom to roam from home.  A youth culture, distinct from the adult world, emerged for the first time.  Rebellion became a virtue, and a “generation gap” became widely obvious.  It will perhaps be impossible to convince New Civers that there has never been a “generation gap” prior to the 20th century, but it’s nevertheless a fact that young people had always been regarded as “miniature adults.”  Marriage came early, and adult responsibilities were taken on in the teen years. What the baby boom generation learned from the beatnik generation was that youthful immaturity can be prolonged well into adulthood.  And an immature adult has one plaything children don’t: sex.  Hugh Hefner saw this coming in the beatnik world of the 50s, and with the active encouragement of Alfred Kinsey, triggered a cultural nuclear weapon that he called the “Playboy philosophy,” the idea that men could and should refuse the tyranny of marriage; serial sexual encounters and the swinging bachelor lifestyle were elevated beyond the ultimate dream to the ultimate virtue.  The fact that the birth control pill was now available, in essence removed any practical limits on the male conscience in this regard.  And because existentialism had already penetrated our civilizational Mind, it had already started to seem “right” that nothing is real but existence itself; the only point of life, it could be argued, is what the beer commercial eventually told us: “gusto.”

What this means, two or three generations later, is that newspapers now simply assume that teenage girls engage in sexual behavior, and that naturally, young women are expected to have a “usual birth control method.”  It’s been a long, long time since everyone knew that “good girls don’t.”  And since good girls in the New Civ[iliation] do (that is, if we actually share in common with our ancestors the idea of what kind of person is this “good girl” who “doesn’t”), pregnancy is often not prevented.  Since boys are no longer expected to do “the right thing,” what’s a girl to do?  (Now, don’t say she shouldn’t have done what it takes to get pregnant in the first place, you prude.)

All the rest follows predictably: abortion, fatherless children, irresponsible, predatory boyfriends, children raising themselves because mom is at work all the time.

And children who raise themselves, quickly discover that the pleasures of adulthood can be had by them, too.  Drink, drugs, sex.  Children having children.  Drug addicted children.  Gangster children.  Violent thug children, with absolutely no respect for any authority.  Vast numbers filtering in and out of prisons, places one movie cop called “gladiator academics.”  A prison culture that spills out across society, and bleeds into the popular music, computer games, television, movies.  And all of this starts to look attractive and natural; kids look forward to participating in things the Western Mind would have regarded as repulsive.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.190-191

Be a Role Model Before Disciplining Children

The parent who is not consistent in his conduct cannot truly exercise discipline in the case of the child.  A parent who does one thing today, and the contrary thing tomorrow, is not capable of sound discipline.  There must be consistency, not only in the reaction but also in the conduct and the behaviour of the parent; there must be pattern about the life of the parent, for the child is always observing and watching.  But if he observes that the parent is erratic and himself does the very thing that he forbids the child to do, again you cannot expect the child to benefit from any discipline administered by such a parent.  There must be nothing erratic, capricious, uncertain or changeable in the parents if they are to exercise discipline.

Another most important principles is that the parents must never be unreasonable or unwilling to hear the child’s case.  There is nothing that so annoys the one who is being disciplined as the feeling that the whole procedure is utterly unreasonable.  In other words, it is a thoroughly bad parent who will not take any circumstances into consideration at all, or who will not listen to any conceivable explanation.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home & Work: An Exposition of Ephesians 5:18-6:9, pg. 280

Homosexuality — No Dissent Allowed

In a culture where tolerance is paramount and each has a right to his own opinions, irrespective of their veracity, dissenting views on homosexuality are seldom tolerated.  People either toe the politically correct line or suffer the consequences.  Moreover, being politically correct does not just mean recognizing homosexuality as an alternate lifestyle.  It requires that we all espouse and enthusiastically promote the entire homosexual agenda.

Gary E. Gilley, “Homosexuality: The Pressing Issue Facing the Church.” Personal Freedom Outreach’s, “The Quarterly Journal,” p.14 

Real Marriage Brings Differences Together

Marriages don’t bring similar things together.  They bring different things together and help them work for a common good.  Same-sex unions are not marriage because they don’t bring the two different parts of humanity together.  The bring similar things together, thus the word same in “same-sex marriage.”

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.43-44

The New Super-Woman?

We need to emphasize that the envisioners of a new society are also seeking to create a New Woman.  Their go is the complete elimination of the traditionally passive, quiet, sensitive, domestic woman.  The New Woman does not find her fulfillment in the home—she finds it in being as much like a man as possible, identical to men, even superior to them.

This New Woman is supposed to be strong, smart, tough, sophisticated, fully capable of fulfilling a man’s role in every sphere—in the factory, the office, or even on the battlefield.  According to this ideological ideal women are even being presented, increasingly, as superior to men—more sensitive, less egotistical, less violent, wiser, emotionally stronger.  For a super-woman such as this, domestic duties are a bore and child-raising is a nuisance.  The Nazis tried to create supermen, and their folly is now known to all.  How long will it be before the attempt to create super-women is likewise recognized as false, evil, destructive, impossible, and absurd?

The New Secular Man is supposed to accommodate this dream of unisex.  He sees himself as essentially no different from a woman, as obligated to defer to women and encourage, help, and support them in their drive to excel.  He must be gentle, sensitive, compassionate, avoid doing anything that offends women, and cater to their demands and expectations.  He must never impose on the woman’s total freedom to be or do whatever she wishes.

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg.436

The LEFT Hates Families

We can examine trends in those parts of our society that jettisoned Judeo-Christian guidance more than a generation ago.  For example, atheist regimes, most notably communist tyrannies, almost always oppose any special treatment of the parent-child relationship; Soviet Russia specialized in training children to rat on their parents.  The hero of the Young Pioneers (the Russian equivalent to the Boy Scouts), was a youngster called Pavlik Morozov, whose parents were murdered by Stalin after young Pavlik betrayed them for not turning in all the family’s food.  They were behaving like parents, trying to ensure his survival rather than patriotically starving along with the rest of the Russian farmers.  Pavlik, however, had not been trained to act like a son, so he betrayed his parents to the state.  To the communists, he was a model for other children to emulate.  Likewise, living in Africa at the time, I well recall that African graduates of Moscow’s revolutionary Lumumba University were instructed to kill a parent upon their return to Africa.  This proved that they were "good communists," and had outgrown family and tribal loyalty.  Even during the early days of Israel...the Jewish defense force, the Haganah, urged youngsters to turn their parents in for associating with the Palmach, a rival organization.  In our own American society, there have recently been lectures in public schools that encourage children to turn to the government if they have a problem with their parents.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.211-212

A Wise and Frugal Government

Still one thing more fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

Thomas Jefferson, cited by Clarence B. Carson, A Basic History of the United States, Vol. 2: The Beginning of the Republic 1775-1825, pg. 4

Marriage Doesn’t Violate Anyone’s Liberty

Defining marriage as the union of a husband and a wife does not violate anyone’s liberty.  If the government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes marriage s the ideal institution for childbearing and childrearing, adults remain perfectly free to make choices about their relationships.  A redefinition by the state of the unique institution of marriage is not necessary for citizens to live in another relationship of their choosing. … Justice Clarence Thomas devotes his entire dissenting opinion in Obergefell to making this point.

The government should not be in the business of affirming our love lives but should leave consenting adults free to live and love as they choose.  Despite the increasingly heated rhetoric from the advocates of “marriage equality,” there was no ban on same-sex marriage in the decade before Obergefell anywhere in the United States.  In all fifty states, two persons of the same sex could live together, join a religious community that would bless their relationship, and choose from a multitude of employers that offered them the same benefits available to married couples.  Chief Justice Roberts highlighted this in his dissent:  “[T]he marriage laws at issue here involve no government intrusion.  They create no crime and impose no punishment.  Same-sex couples remain free to live together, to engage in intimate conduct, and to raise their families as they see fit.”  No government license or sanction was necessary for any of this.

But isn’t the government’s refusal to bestow the name of “marriage” on same-sex relationships demeaning to the persons in those relationships?  In the Obergefell oral arguments, Justice Kennedy, dismissing the universal and immemorial comprehensive view of marriage, declared that “the whole purpose of marriage” is to bestow “dignity” on a couple.  If he were right, then withholding that “dignity” from same-sex couples would indeed be demeaning.  But John Bursh, the lawyer defending the State of Michigan’s marriage laws, explained that the institution of marriage “did not develop to deny dignity or to give second-class stats to anyone.  It developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, arise from biology.”

Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, however, and as far as the state is concerned, biology now has nothing to do with it.  Americans—many of whom thought same-sex marriage would have no effect on them—are about to learn that the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage will have consequences for everyone. …

Ryan T. Anderson, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” pg.34-35

The Weapon of the Mind